Signed word lengths and indexes

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:48:10 -0400, BCS <none at anon.com> wrote:

> Hello Steven,
>
>> div0 <div0 at users.sourceforge.net> writes:
>>
>>> for(uint i = end - 1; i < length; --i)
>>> ...
>> What does "length" represent here? It's not clear to me how "i"
>> descending toward zero is going to break the guard condition.
>>
>
> My thought exactly.
>
> If i<j and you --i, I'd assume i<j, if your code depends on the case  
> where the assumption is wrong, don't ask me to do a code review because  
> I won't sign off on it.
>

i is unsigned, and therefore can never be less than 0.  It's actually a  
clever way to do it that I've never thought of.

Read it more like this:

for(uint i = end - 1; i < length && i >= 0; --i)

But the i >= 0 is implicit because i is unsigned.

-Steve